The Banh Dictionary

To those of us who raise an eyebrow over names like “fish cake”, “spicy rice cake”, “sticky rice cake”: you’re not alone. Whether you actually know what they are, you know that they must not be the right translation, and more amusingly, that they’re not even related enough to live together under the “cake” category. The Vietnamese label “bánh” (pronounced |beng| in the North and a no-equivalent-English-sound, mouth-horizontally-widened fashion in the South) for everything made from flour, whether it be a noodle or a gateau. And it’s tiring to hear every “bánh” turns into a “cake” after translation. So this page is my comprehensive and continuously updated list of the Vietnamese bánh‘s and their correct translations (and an extremely feeble attempt to phoneticize the Northern pronunciation).